44 BC

THE SECOND ORATION AGAINST

MARCUS ANTONIUS

(Called also the Second Philippic)

Marcus Tullius Cicero

translated by Charles Duke Yonge, A.B.

Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106-43 BC)

- Rome’s greatest orator, philosopher,

and rhetorician, he developed a style of speaking that was emulated for centuries
thereafter. Cicero was influential in the development of Latin as more than just a
utilitarian language. The Second Oration Against Marcus Antonius (44 BC) -
Also called the “Second Philippic.” The second in a series of speeches attacking
Antonius. Copies of this speech were sent to Brutus and Cassius, but it was never
spoken.

THE ARGUMENT

This second speech was not actually spoken at all. Antonius was greatly en-

raged at the first speech, and summoned another meeting of the Senate for the
nineteenth day of the month, giving Cicero especial notice to be present, and he
employed the interval in preparing an invective against Cicero, and a reply to the
first Philippic. The Senate met in the temple of Concord, but Cicero himself was
persuaded not to attend by his friends, who were afraid of Antonius proceeding to
actual violence against him (and indeed he brought a strong guard of armed men
with him to the Senate). He spoke with the greatest fury against Cicero, charging
him with having been the principal author and contriver of Caesar’s murder, hop-
ing by this to inflame the soldiers, whom he had posted within hearing of his ha-
rangue.

Soon after this Cicero removed to a villa near Naples for greater safety, and

here he composed this second Philippic, which he did not publish immediately,
but contented himself at first with sending a copy to Brutus and Cassius, who
were much pleased with it.

THE SECOND ORATION AGAINST MARCUS

ANTONIUS

Called also the Second Philippic

TO what destiny of mine, O conscript fathers, shall I say that it is owing, that

none for the last twenty years has been an enemy to the republic without at the
same time declaring war against me? Nor is there any necessity for naming any
particular person; you yourselves recollect instances in proof of my statement.
They have all hitherto suffered severer punishments than I could have wished for
them; but I marvel that you, O Antonius, do not fear the end of those men whose
conduct you are imitating. And in others I was less surprised at this. None of
those men of former times was a voluntary enemy to me; all of them were at-
tacked by me for the sake of the republic. But you, who have never been injured
by me, not even by a word, in order to appear more audacious than Catiline, more
frantic than Clodius, have of your own accord attacked me with abuse, and have
considered that your alienation from me would be a recommendation of you to
impious citizens.

What am I to think? that I have been despised? I see nothing either in my life,

or in my influence in the city, or in my exploits, or even in the moderate abilities
with which I am endowed, which Antonius can despise. Did he think that it was

easiest to disparage me in the Senate? a body which has borne its testimony in fa-
vor of many most illustrious citizens that they governed the republic well, but in
favor of me alone, of all men, that I preserved it. Or did he wish to contend with
me in a rivalry of eloquence? This, indeed, is an act of generosity? for what could
be a more fertile or richer subject for me, than to have to speak in defence of my-
self, and against Antonius? This, in fact, is the truth. He thought it impossible to
prove to the satisfaction of those men who resembled himself, that he was an en-
emy to his country, if he was not also an enemy to me. And before I make him
any reply on the other topics of his speech, I will say a few words respecting the
friendship formerly subsisting between us, which he has accused me of violating,
for that I consider a most serious charge.

He has complained that I pleaded once against his interest. Was I not to plead

against one with whom I was quite unconnected, in behalf of an intimate acquain-
tance, of a dear friend? Was I not to plead against interest acquired not by hopes
of virtue, but by the disgrace of youth? Was I not to plead against an injustice
which that man procured to be done by the obsequiousness of a most iniquitous
interposer of his veto, not by any law regulating the privileges of the praetor? But
I imagine that this was mentioned by you, in order that you might recommend
yourself to the citizens, if they all recollected that you were the son-in-law of a
freedman, and that your children were the grandsons of Quintus Fadius, a freed-
man.

But you had entirely devoted yourself to my principles (for this is what you

said); you had been in the habit of coming to my house. In truth, if you had done
so, you would more have consulted your own character and your reputation for
chastity. But you did not do so, nor, if you had wished it, would Caius Curio have
ever suffered you to do so. You have said that you retired in my favor from the
contest for the augurship. Oh, the incredible audacity! oh, the monstrous impru-
dence of such an assertion! For, at the time when Cnaeus Pompeius and Quintus
Hortensius named me as augur, after I had been wished for as such by the whole
college (for it was not lawful for me to be put in nomination by more than two
members of the college), you were notoriously insolvent, nor did you think it pos-
sible for your safety to be secured by any other means than by the destruction of
the republic. But was it possible for you to stand for the augurship at a time when
Curio was not in Italy? or even at the time when you were elected, could you
have got the votes of one single tribe without the aid of Curio? whose intimate
friends even were convicted of violence for having been too zealous in your favor.

But I availed myself of your friendly assistance. Of what assistance? Al-

though the instance which you cite I have myself at all times openly admitted. I
preferred confessing that I was under obligations to you, to letting myself appear
to any foolish person not sufficiently grateful. However, what was the kindness
that you did me? not killing me at Brundusium? Would you then have slain the
man whom the conqueror himself, who conferred on you, as you used to boast,
the chief rank among all his robbers, had desired to be safe, and had enjoined to

go to Italy? Grant that you could have slain him, is not this, O conscript fathers,
such a kindness as is done by banditti, who are contented with being able to boast
that they have granted their lives to all those men whose lives they have not
taken? and if that were really a kindness, then those who slew that man by whom
they themselves had been saved, and whom you yourself are in the habit of styl-
ing most illustrious men, would never have acquired such immortal glory. But
what sort of kindness is it, to have abstained from committing nefarious wicked-
ness? It is a case in which it ought not to appear so delightful to me not to have
been killed by you, as miserable, that it should have been in your power to do
such a thing with impunity. However, grant that it was a kindness, since no
greater kindness could be received from a robber, still in what point can you call
me ungrateful? Ought I not to complain of the ruin of the republic, lest I should
appear ungrateful toward you? But in that complaint, mournful indeed and miser-
able, but still unavoidable for a man of that rank in which the Senate and people
of Rome have placed me, what did I say that was insulting? that was otherwise
than moderate? that was otherwise than friendly? and what instance was it not of
moderation to complain of the conduct of Marcus Antonius, and yet to abstain
from any abusive expressions? especially when you had scattered abroad all relics
of the republic; when everything was on sale at your house by the most infamous
traffic; when you confessed that those laws which had never been promulgated,
had been passed with reference to you, and by you; when you, being augur, had
abolished the auspices, being consul, had taken away the power of interposing the
veto; when you were escorted in the most shameful manner by armed guards;

when, worn out with drunkenness and debauchery, you were every day perform-
ing all sorts of obscenities in that chaste house of yours. But I, as if I had to con-
tend against Marcus Crassus, with whom I have had many severe struggles, and
not with a most worthless gladiator, while complaining in dignified language of
the state of the republic, did not say one word which could be called personal.
Therefore, to-day I will make him understand with what great kindness he was
then treated by me.

But he also read letters which he said that I had sent to him, like a man devoid

of humanity and ignorant of the common usages of life. For who ever, who was
even but slightly acquainted with the habits of polite men, produced in an assem-
bly and openly read letters which had been sent to him by a friend, just because
some quarrel had arisen between them? Is not this destroying all companionship
in life, destroying the means by which absent friends converse together? How
many jests are frequently put in letters, which, if they were produced in public,
would appear stupid! How many serious opinions, which, for all that, ought not to
be published! Let this be a proof of your utter ignorance of courtesy. Now mark,
also, his incredible folly. What have you to oppose to me, O you eloquent man, as
you seem at least to Mustela Tamisius, and to Tiro Numisius? And while these
men are standing at this very time in the sight of the Senate with drawn swords, I
too will think you an eloquent man if you will show how you would defend them
if they were charged with being assassins. However, what answer would you
make if I were to deny that I ever sent those letters to you? By what evidence

could you convict me? by my handwriting? Of handwriting indeed you have a lu-
crative knowledge.1 How can you prove it in that manner? for the letters are writ-
ten by an amanuensis. By this time I envy your teacher, who for all that payment,
which I shall mention presently, has taught you to know nothing.

For what can be less like, I do not say an orator, but a man, than to reproach

an adversary with a thing which if he denies by one single word, he who has re-
proached him cannot advance one step further? But I do not deny it; and in this
very point I convict you not only of inhumanity, but also of madness. For what ex-
pression is there in those letters which is not full of humanity and service and be-
nevolence? and the whole of your charge amounts to this, that I do not express a
bad opinion of you in those letters; that in them I wrote as to a citizen, and as to a
virtuous man, not as to a wicked man and a robber. But your letters I will not pro-
duce, although I fairly might, now that I am thus challenged by you; letters in
which you beg of me that you may be enabled by my consent to procure the recall
of someone from exile; and you will not attempt it if I have any objection, and
you prevail on me by your entreaties. For why should I put myself in the way of
your audacity? when neither the authority of this body, nor the opinion of the Ro-

1

He means to insinuate that Antonius had been forging
Caesar’s handwriting and signature.

man people, nor any laws are able to restrain you. However, what was the object
of your addressing these entreaties to me, if the man for whom you were entreat-
ing was already restored by a law of Caesar’s? I suppose the truth was that he
wished it to be done by me as a favor; in which matter there could not be any fa-
vor done even by himself, if a law was already passed for the purpose.

But as, O conscript fathers, I have many things which I must say both in my

own defence and against Marcus Antonius, one thing I ask you, that you will lis-
ten to me with kindness while I am speaking for myself; the other I will insure
myself, namely, that you shall listen to me with attention while speaking against
him. At the same time also, I beg this of you; that if you have been acquainted
with my moderation and modesty throughout my whole life, and especially as a
speaker, you will not, when to-day I answer this man in the spirit in which he has
attacked me, think that I have forgotten my usual character. I will not treat him as
a consul, for he did not treat me as a man of consular rank; and although he in no
respect deserves to be considered a consul, whether we regard his way of life, or
his principle of governing the republic, or the manner in which he was elected, I
am beyond all dispute a man of consular rank.

That, therefore, you might understand what sort of a consul he professed to be

himself, he reproached me with my consulship- a consulship which, O conscript
fathers, was in name, indeed, mine, but in reality yours. For what did I determine,
what did I contrive, what did I do, that was not determined, contrived, or done, by
the counsel and authority and in accordance with the sentiments of this order?

And have you, O wise man, O man not merely eloquent, dared to find fault with
these actions before the very men by whose counsel and wisdom they were per-
formed? But who was ever found before, except Publius Clodius, to find fault
with my consulship? And his fate indeed awaits you, as it also awaited Caius Cu-
rio; since that is now in your house which was fatal to each of them.2

Marcus Antonius disapproves of my consulship; but it was approved of by

Publius Servilius- to name that man first of the men of consular rank who had
died most recently. It was approved of by Quintus Catulus, whose authority will
always carry weight in this republic; it was approved of by the two Luculli, by
Marcus Crassus, by Quintus Hortensius, by Caius Curio, by Caius Piso, by Mar-
cus Glabrio, by Marcus Lepidus, by Lucius Volcatius, by Caius Figulus, by
Decimus Silanus and Lucius Murena, who at that time were the consuls elect; the
same consulship also which was approved of by those men of consular rank, was
approved of by Marcus Cato; who escaped many evils by departing from this life,
and especially the evil of seeing you consul. But, above all, my consulship was
approved of by Cnaeus Pompeius, who, when he first saw me, as he was leaving
Syria, embracing me and congratulating me, said, that it was owing to my serv-

2

Fulvia, who had been the wife of Clodius, and afterward of
Curio, was now the wife of Antonius.

ices that he was about to see his country again. But why should I mention indi-
viduals? It was approved of by the Senate, in a very full house, so completely,
that there was no one who did not thank me as if I had been his parent, who did
not attribute to me the salvation of his life, of his fortunes, of his children, and of
the republic.

But, since the republic has been now deprived of those men whom I have

named, many and illustrious as they were, let us come to the living, since two of
the men of consular rank are still left to us: Lucius Cotta, a man of the greatest
genius and the most consummate prudence, proposed a supplication in my honor
for those very actions with which you find fault, in the most complimentary lan-
guage, and those very men of consular rank whom I have named, and the whole
Senate, adopted his proposal; an honor which has never been paid to anyone else
in the garb of peace from the foundation of the city to my time. With what elo-
quence, with what firm wisdom, with what a weight of authority did Lucius Cae-
sar, your uncle, pronounce his opinion against the husband of his own sister, your
step-father. But you, when you ought to have taken him as your adviser and tutor
in all your designs, and in the whole conduct of your life, preferred being like
your step-father to resembling your uncle. I, who had no connection with him,
acted by his counsels while I was consul. Did you, who were his sister’s son, ever
once consult him on the affairs of the republic?

But who are they whom Antonius does consult? O ye immortal gods, they are

men whose birth-days we have still to learn. To-day Antonius is not coming

down. Why? He is celebrating the birth-day feast at his villa. In whose honor? I
will name no one. Suppose it is in honor of some Phormio, or Gnatho, or even
Ballio. 3 Oh, the abominable profligacy of the man! oh, how intolerable is his im-
pudence, his debauchery, and his lust! Can you, when you have one of the chiefs
of the Senate, a citizen of singular virtue, so nearly related to you, abstain from
ever consulting him on the affairs of the republic, and consult men who have no
property whatever of their own, and are draining yours?

Yes, your consulship, forsooth, is a salutary one for the state, mine a mischie-

vous one. Have you so entirely lost all shame as well as all chastity, that you
could venture to say this in that temple in which I was consulting that Senate
which formerly in the full enjoyment of its honors presided over the world? And
did you place around it abandoned men armed with swords? But you have dared
besides (what is there which you would not dare?) to say that the Capitoline Hill,
when I was consul, was full of armed slaves. I was offering violence to the Sen-
ate, I suppose, in order to compel the adoption of those infamous decrees of the
Senate. O wretched man, whether those things are not known to you (for you
know nothing that is good), or whether they are, when you dare to speak so
shamelessly before such men! For what Roman knight was there, what youth of

3

These were the names of slaves.

noble birth except you, what man of any rank or class who recollected that he was
a citizen, who was not on the Capitoline Hill while the Senate was assembled in
this temple? who was there, who did not give in his name? Although there could
not be provided checks enough, nor were the books able to contain their names.

In truth, when wicked men, being compelled by the revelations of the accom-

plices, by their own handwriting, and by what I may almost call the voices of
their letters, were confessing that they had planned the parricidal destruction of
their country, and that they had agreed to burn the city, to massacre the citizens, to
devastate Italy, to destroy the republic; who could have existed without being
roused to defend the common safety? especially when the Senate and people of
Rome had a leader then; and if they had one now like he was then, the same fate
would befall you which did overtake them.

He asserts that the body of his step-father was not allowed burial by me. But

this is an assertion that was never made by Publius Clodius, a man whom, as I
was deservedly an enemy of his, I grieve now to see surpassed by you in every
sort of vice. But how could it occur to you to recall to our recollection that you
had been educated in the house of Publius Lentulus? Were you afraid that we
might think that you could have turned out as infamous as you are by the mere
force of nature, if your natural qualities had not been strengthened by education?

But you are so senseless that throughout the whole of your speech you were at

variance with yourself; so that you said things which had not only no coherence
with each other, but which were most inconsistent with and contradictory to one

another; so that there was not so much opposition between you and me as there
was between you and yourself. You confessed that your step-father had been im-
plicated in that enormous wickedness, yet you complained that he had had punish-
ment inflicted on him. And by doing so you praised what was peculiarly my
achievement, and blamed that which was wholly the act of the Senate. For the de-
tection and arrest of the guilty parties was my work, their punishment was the
work of the Senate. But that eloquent man does not perceive that the man against
whom he is speaking is being praised by him, and that those before whom he is
speaking are being attacked by him. But now what an act, I will not say of audac-
ity (for he is anxious to be audacious), but (and that is what he is not desirous of)
what an act of folly, in which he surpasses all men, is it to make mention of the
Capitoline Hill, at a time when armed men are actually between our benches-
when men, armed with swords, are now stationed in this same temple of Concord,
O ye immortal gods, in which, while I was consul, opinions most salutary to the
state were delivered, owing to which it is that we are all alive at this day.

Accuse the Senate; accuse the equestrian body, which at that time was united

with the Senate; accuse every order of society, and all the citizens, as long as you
confess that this assembly at this very moment is besieged by Ityrean 4 soldiers. It
is not so much a proof of audacity to advance these statements so impudently, as
of utter want of sense to be unable to see their contradictory nature. For what is

4

Ityra was a town at the foot of Mount Taurus.

more insane than, after you yourself have taken up arms to do mischief to the re-
public, to reproach another with having taken them up to secure its safety? On
one occasion you attempted even to be witty. O ye good gods, how little did that
attempt suit you! And yet you are a little to be blamed for your failure in that in-
stance, too. For you might have got some wit from your wife, who was an actress.
“Arms to the gown must yield.” Well, have they not yielded? But afterward the
gown yielded to your arms. Let us inquire then whether it was better for the arms
of wicked men to yield to the freedom of the Roman people, or that our liberty
should yield to your arms. Nor will I make any further reply to you about the
verses. I will only say briefly that you do not understand them, nor any other lit-
erature whatever. That I have never at any time been wanting to the claims that
either the republic or my friends had upon me; but nevertheless that in all the dif-
ferent sorts of composition on which I have employed myself, during my leisure
hours, I have always endeavored to make my labors and my writings such as to
be some advantage to our youth, and some credit to the Roman name. But, how-
ever, all this has nothing to do with the present occasion. Let us consider more im-
portant matters.

You have said the Publius Clodius was slain by my contrivance. What would

men have thought if he had been slain at the time when you pursued him in the fo-
rum with a drawn sword, in the sight of all the Roman people; and when you
would have settled his business if he had not thrown himself up the stairs of a

bookseller’s shop, and, shutting them against you, checked your attack by that
means? And I confess that at that time I favored you, but even you yourself do
not say that I had advised your attempt. But as for Milo, it was not possible even
for me to favor his action. For he had finished the business before anyone could
suspect that he was going to do it. Oh, but I advised it. I suppose Milo was a man
of such a disposition that he not able to do a service to the republic if he had not
someone to advise him to do it. But I rejoiced at it. Well, suppose I did; was I to
be the only sorrowful person in the city, when everyone else was in such delight?
Although that inquiry into the death of Publius Clodius was not instituted with
any great wisdom. For what was the reason for having a new law to inquire into
the conduct of the man who had slain him, when there was a form of inquiry al-
ready established by the laws? However, an inquiry was instituted. And have you
now been found, so many years afterward, to say a thing which, at the time that
the affair was under discussion, no one ventured to say against me? But as to the
assertion that you have dared to make, and that at great length too, that it was by
my means that Pompeius was alienated from his friendship with Caesar, and that
on that account it was my fault that the civil war was originated; in that you have
not erred so much in the main facts, as (and that is of the greatest importance) in
the times.

When Marcus Bibulus, a most illustrious citizen, was consul, I omitted noth-

ing which I could possibly do or attempt to draw off Pompeius from his union
with Caesar. In which, however, Caesar was more fortunate than I, for he himself

drew off Pompeius from his intimacy with me. But afterward, when Pompeius
joined Caesar with all his heart, what could have been my object in attempting to
separate them then? It would have been the part of a fool to hope to do so, and of
an impudent man to advise it. However, two occasions did arise, on which I gave
Pompeius advice against Caesar. You are at liberty to find fault with my conduct
on those occasions if you can. One was when I advised him not to continue Cae-
sar’s government for five years more. The other, when I advised him not to permit
him to be considered as a candidate for the consulship when he was absent. And
if I had been able to prevail on him in either of these particulars, we should never
have fallen into our present miseries.

Moreover, I also, when Pompeius had now devoted to the service of Caesar

all his own power, and all the power of the Roman people, and had begun when it
was too late to perceive all those things which I had foreseen long before, and
when I saw that a nefarious war was about to be waged against our country, I
never ceased to be the adviser of peace, and concord, and some arrangement. And
that language of mine was well known to many people- “I wish, O Cnaeus Pom-
peius, that you had either never joined in a confederacy with Caius Caesar, or else
that you had never broken it off. The one conduct would have become your dig-
nity, and the other would have been suited to your prudence.” This, O Marcus An-
tonius, was at all times my advice both respecting Pompeius and concerning the
republic. And if it had prevailed, the republic would still be standing, and you
would have perished through your own crimes, and indigence, and infamy.

But these are all old stories now. This charge, however, is quite a modern one,

that Caesar was slain by my contrivance. I am afraid, O conscript fathers, lest I
should appear to you to have brought up a sham accuser against myself (which is
a most disgraceful thing to do); a man not only to distinguish me by the praises
which are my due, but to load me also with those which do not belong to me. For
who ever heard my name mentioned as an accomplice in that most glorious ac-
tion? and whose name has been concealed who was in the number of that gallant
band? Concealed, do I say? Whose name was there which was not at once made
public? I should sooner say that some men had boasted in order to appear to have
been concerned in that conspiracy, though they had in reality known nothing of it,
than that anyone who had been an accomplice in it could have wished to be con-
cealed. Moreover, how likely it is, that among such a number of men, some ob-
scure, some young men who had not the wit to conceal anyone, my name could
possibly have escaped notice! Indeed, if leaders were wanted for the purpose of
delivering the country, what need was there of my instigating the Bruti, one of
whom saw every day in his house the image of Lucius Brutus, and the other saw
also the image of Ahala? Were these the men to seek counsel from the ancestors
of others rather than from their own? and out of doors rather than at home? What?
Caius Cassius, a man of that family which could not endure, I will not say the
domination, but even the power of any individual- he, I suppose, was in need of
me to instigate him? a man who, even without the assistance of these other most
illustrious men, would have accomplished this same deed in Cilicia, at the mouth
of the river Cydnus, if Caesar had brought his ships to that bank of the river

which he had intended, and not to the opposite one. Was Cnaeus Domitius
spurred on to seek to recover his dignity, not by the death of his father, a most il-
lustrious man, nor by the death of his uncle, nor by the deprivation of his own dig-
nity, but by my advice and authority? Did I persuade Caius Trebonius? a man
whom I should not have ventured even to advise. On which account the republic
owes him even a larger debt of gratitude, because he preferred the liberty of the
Roman people to the friendship of one man, and because he preferred overthrow-
ing arbitrary power to sharing it. Was I the instigator whom Lucius Tillius Cimber
followed? a man whom I admired for having performed that action, rather than
ever expected that he would perform it; and I admired him on this account, that he
was unmindful of the personal kindnesses which he had received, but mindful of
his country. What shall I say of the two Servilii? Shall I call them Cascas, or Aha-
las? and do you think that those men were instigated by my authority rather than
by their affection for the republic? It would take a long time to go through all the
rest; and it is a glorious thing for the republic that they were so numerous, and
most honorable thing also for themselves.

But recollect, I pray you, how that clever man convicted me of being an ac-

complice in the business. When Caesar was slain, says he, Marcus Brutus immedi-
ately lifted up on high his bloody dagger, and called on Cicero by name; and
congratulated him on liberty being recovered. Why on me above all men? Be-
cause I knew of it beforehand? Consider rather whether this was not his reason
for calling on me, that, when he had performed an action very like those which I

myself had done, he called me above all men to witness that he had been an imita-
tor of my exploits. But you, O stupidest of all men, do not you perceive, that if it
is a crime to have wished that Caesar should be slain- which you accuse me of
having wished- it is a crime also to have rejoiced at his death? For what is the dif-
ference between a man who has advised an action, and one who has approved of
it? or what does it signify whether I wished it to be done, or rejoice that it has
been done? Is there anyone then, except you yourself and those men who wished
him to become king, who was unwilling that that deed should be done, or who dis-
approved of it after it was done? All men, therefore, are guilty as far as this goes.
In truth, all good men, as far as it depended on them, bore a part in the slaying of
Caesar. Some did not know how to contrive it, some had not courage for it, some
had no opportunity- everyone had the inclination.

However, remark the stupidity of this fellow- I should rather say, of this brute

beast. For thus he spoke; “Marcus Brutus, whom I name to do him honor, holding
aloft his bloody dagger, called upon Cicero, from which it must be understood
that he was privy to the action.” Am I then called wicked by you because you sus-
pect that I suspected something; and is he who openly displayed his reeking dag-
ger, named by you that you may do him honor? Be it so. Let this stupidity exist in
your language: how much greater is it in your actions and opinions! Arrange mat-
ters in this way at last, O consul; pronounce the cause of the Bruti, of Caius Cas-
sius, of Cnaeus Domitius, of Caius Trebonius and the rest to be whatever you
please to call it: sleep off that intoxication of yours, sleep it off and take breath.

Must one apply a torch to you to waken you while you are sleeping over such an
important affair? Will you never understand that you have to decide whether
those men who performed that action are homicides or assertors of freedom?

For just consider a little; and for a moment think of the business like a sober

man. I who, as I myself confess, am an intimate friend of those men, and, as you
accuse me, an accomplice of theirs, deny that there is any medium between these
alternatives. I confess that they, if they be not deliverers of the Roman people and
saviours of the republic, are worse than assassins, worse than homicides, worse
even than parricides; since it is a more atrocious thing to murder the father of
one’s country, than one’s own father. You wise and considerate man, what do you
say to this? If they are parricides, why are they always named by you, both in this
assembly and before the Roman people, with a view to do them honor? Why has
Marcus Brutus been, on your motion, excused from obedience to the laws, and al-
lowed to be absent from the city more than ten days? 5 Why were the games of
Apollo celebrated with incredible honor to Marcus Brutus? why were provinces
given to Brutus and Cassius? why were quaestors assigned to them? why was the
number of their lieutenants augmented? And all these measures were owing to

5

Brutus was the Praetor urbanus this year, and that officer’s
duty confined him to the city; and he was forbidden by law
to be absent more than ten days at a time during his year of
office.

you. They are not homicides then. It follows that in your opinion they are deliver-
ers of their country, since there can be no other alternative. What is the matter?
Am I embarrassing you? For perhaps you do not quite understand propositions
which are state disjunctively. Still this is the sum total of my conclusion; that
since they are acquitted by you of wickedness, they are at the same time pro-
nounced most worthy of the very most honorable rewards.

Therefore, I will now proceed again with my oration. I will write to them, if

anyone by chance should ask whether what you have imputed to me be true, not
to deny it to anyone. In truth, I am afraid that it must be considered, either a not
very creditable thing to them, that they should have concealed the fact of my be-
ing an accomplice; or else a most discreditable one to me that I was invited to be
one, and that I shirked it. For what greater exploit (I call you to witness, O august
Jupiter!) was ever achieved not only in this city, but in all the earth? What more
glorious action was ever done? What deed was ever more deservedly recom-
mended to the everlasting recollection of men? Do you, then, shut me up with the
other leaders in the partnership in this design, as in the Trojan horse? I have no ob-
jection; I even thank you for doing so, with whatever intent you do it. For the
deed is so great a one, that I cannot compare the unpopularity which you wish to
excite against me on account of it, with its real glory.

For who can be happier than those men whom you boast of having now ex-

pelled and driven from the city? What place is there either so deserted or so un-

civilized, as not to seem to greet and to covet the presence of those men wherever
they have arrived? What men are so clownish as not, when they have once beheld
them, to think that they have reaped the greatest enjoyment that life can give?
And what posterity will be ever so forgetful, what literature will ever be found so
ungrateful, as not to cherish their glory with undying recollection? Enroll me
then, I beg, in the number of those men.

But one thing I am afraid you may not approve of. For if I had really been one

of their number, I should have not only got rid of the king, but of the kingly
power also out of the republic; and if I had been the author of the piece, as it is
said, believe me, I should not have been contented with one act, but should have
finished the whole play. Although, if it be a crime to have wished that Caesar
might be put to death, beware, I pray you, O Antonius, of what must be your own
case, as it is notorious that you, when at Narbo, formed a plan of the same sort
with Caius Trebonius; and it was on account of your participation in that design
that, when Caesar was being killed, we saw you called aside by Trebonius. But I
(see how far I am from any horrible inclination toward,) praise you for having
once in your life had a righteous intention; I return you thanks for not having re-
vealed the matter; and I excuse you for not having accomplished your purpose.
That exploit required a man.

And if anyone should institute a prosecution against you, and employ that test

of old Cassius, “who reaped any advantage from it?” take care, I advise you, lest
you suit that description. Although, in truth, that action was, as you used to say,

an advantage to everyone who was not willing to be a slave, still it was so to you
above all men, who are not merely not a slave, but are actually a king; who deliv-
ered yourself from an enormous burden of debt at the temple of Ops; who, by
your dealings with the account-books, there squandered a countless sum of
money; who have had such vast treasures brought to you from Caesar’s house; at
whose own house there is set up a most lucrative manufactory of false memo-
randa and autographs, and a most iniquitous market of lands, and towns, and ex-
emptions, and revenues. In truth, what measure except the death of Caesar could
possibly have been any relief to your indigent and insolvent condition? You ap-
pear to be somewhat agitated. Have you any secret fear that you yourself may ap-
pear to have had some connection with that crime? I will release you from all
apprehension; no one will ever believe it; it is not like you to deserve well of the
republic; the most illustrious men in the republic are the authors of that exploit; I
only say that you are glad it was done; I do not accuse you of having done it.

I have replied to your heaviest accusations, I must now also reply to the rest

of them.

You have thrown in my teeth the camp of Pompeius and all my conduct at

that time. At which time, indeed, if, as I have said before, my counsels and my
authority had prevailed, you would this day be in indigence, we should be free,
and the republic would not have lost so many generals and so many armies. For I
confess that, when I saw that these things certainly would happen, which now
have happened, I was as greatly grieved as all the other virtuous citizens would

have been if they had foreseen the same things. I did grieve, I did grieve, O con-
script fathers, that the republic which had once been saved by your counsels and
mine, was fated to perish in a short time. Nor was I so inexperienced in and igno-
rant of this nature of things, as to be disheartened on account of a fondness for
life, which while it endured would wear me out with anguish, and when brought
to an end would release me from all trouble. But I was desirous that those most il-
lustrious men, the lights of the republic, should live: so many men of consular
rank, so many men of praetorian rank, so many most honorable senators; and be-
sides them all the flower of our nobility and of our youth; and the armies of excel-
lent citizens. And if they were still alive, under ever such hard conditions of peace
(for any sort of peace with our fellow-citizens appeared to me more desirable than
civil war), we should be still this day enjoying the republic.

And if my opinion had prevailed, and if those men, the preservation of whose

lives was my main object, elated with the hope of victory, had not been my chief
opposers, to say nothing of other results, at all events you would never have con-
tinued in this order, or rather in this city. But say you, my speech alienated from
me the regard of Pompeius? Was there anyone to whom he was more attached?
anyone with whom he conversed or shared his counsels more frequently? It was,
indeed, a great thing that we, differing as we did respecting the general interests
of the republic, should continue in uninterrupted friendship. But I saw clearly
what his opinions and views were, and he saw mine equally. I was for providing
for the safety of the citizens in the first place, in order that we might be able to

consult their dignity afterward. He thought more of consulting their existing dig-
nity. But because each of us had a definite object to pursue, our disagreement was
the more endurable. But what that extraordinary and almost godlike man thought
of me is known to those men who pursued him to Paphos from the battle of Phar-
salia. No mention of me was ever made by him that was not the most honorable
that could be, that was not full of the most friendly regret for me; while he con-
fessed that I had had the most foresight, but that he had had more sanguine hopes.
And do you dare taunt me with the name of that man whose friend you admit that
I was, and whose assassin you confess yourself?

However, let us say no more of that war, in which you were too fortunate. I

will not reply even with those jests to which you have said that I gave utterance in
the camp. That camp was in truth full of anxiety, but although men are in great
difficulties, still, provided they are men, they sometimes relax their minds. But
the fact that the same man finds fault with my melancholy, and also with my
jokes, is a great proof that I was very moderate in each particular.

You have said that no inheritances come to me. Would that this accusation of

yours were a true one; I should have more of my friends and connections alive.
But how could such a charge ever come into your head? For I have received more
than twenty millions of sesterces in inheritances. Although in this particular I ad-
mit that you have been more fortunate than I. No one has ever made me his heir
except he was a friend of mine, in order that my grief of mind for his loss might
be accompanied also with some gain, if it was to be considered as such. But a

man whom you never even saw, Lucius Rubrius, of Casinum, made you his heir.
And see now how much he loved you, who, though he did not know whether you
were white or black, passed over the son of his brother, Quintus Fufius, a most
honorable Roman knight, and most attached to him, whom he had on all occa-
sions openly declared his heir (he never even names him in his will), and he
makes you his heir whom he had never seen, or at all events had never spoken to.

I wish you would tell me, if it is not too much trouble, what sort of counte-

nance Lucius Turselius was of; what sort of height; from what municipal town he
came; and of what tribe he was a member. “I know nothing,” you will say, “about
him, except what farms he had.” Therefore, he, disinheriting his brother, made
you his heir. And besides these instances, this man has seized on much other prop-
erty belonging to men wholly unconnected with him, to the exclusion of the legiti-
mate heirs, as if he himself were the heir. Although the thing that struck me with
most astonishment of all was, that you should venture to make mention of inheri-
tances, when you yourself had not received the inheritance of your own father.

And was it in order to collect all these arguments, O you most senseless of

men, that you spent so many days in practising declamations in another man’s
villa? Although, indeed (as your most intimate friends usually say), you are in the
habit of declaiming not for the purpose of whetting your genius, but of working
off the effects of wine. And, indeed, you employ a master to teach you jokes, a
man appointed by your own vote and that of your boon companions; a rhetori-
cian, whom you have allowed to say whatever he pleased against you, a thor-

oughly facetious gentlemen; but there are plenty of materials for speaking against
you and against your friends. But just see now what a difference there is between
you and your grandfather. He used with great deliberation to bring forth argu-
ments advantageous to the cause he was advocating; you pour forth in a hurry the
sentiments which you have been taught by another. And what wages have you
paid this rhetorician? Listen, listen, O conscript fathers, and learn the blows
which are inflicted on the republic. You have assigned, O Antonius, two thousand
acres 6 of land, in the Leontine district, to Sextus Clodius, the rhetorician, and
those, too, exempt from every kind of tax, for the sake of putting the Roman peo-
ple to such a vast expense that you might learn to be a fool. Was this gift, too, O
you most audacious of men, found among Caesar’s papers? But I will take an-
other opportunity to speak about the Leontine and the Campanian district; where
he has stolen lands from the republic to pollute them with most infamous owners.
For now, since I have sufficiently replied to all his charges, I must say a little
about our corrector and censor himself. And yet I will not say all I could, in order

6

The Latin word jugerum “an acre,” because it is usually so
translated, but in point of fact it was not quite two-thirds of
an English acre. At the same time it was nearly three times as
large as the Greek plethron, which is often translated acre
also.

that if I have often to battle with him I may always come to the contest with fresh
arms; and the multitude of his vices and atrocities will easily enable me to do so.

Shall we, then, examine your conduct from the time when you were a boy? I

think so. Let us begin at the beginning. Do you recollect that, while you were still
clad in the praetexta, you became a bankrupt? That was the fault of your father,
you will say. I admit that. In truth, such a defence is full of filial affection. But it
is peculiarly suited to your own audacity, that you sat among the fourteen rows of
the knights, though by the Roscian law there was a place appointed for bankrupts,
even if anyone had become such by the fault of fortune and not by his own. You
assumed the manly gown, which you soon made a womanly one; at first a public
prostitute, with a regular price for your wickedness, and that not a low one. But
very soon Curio stepped in, who carried you off from your public trade, and, as if
he had bestowed a matron’s robe upon you, settled you in a steady and durable
wedlock. No boy bought for the gratification of passion was ever so wholly in the
power of his master as you were in Curio’s. How often has his father turned you
out of his house? How often has he placed guards to prevent you from entering?
while you, with night for your accomplice, lust for your encourager, and wages
for your compeller, were let down through the roof. That house could no longer
endure your wickedness. Do you not know that I am speaking of matters with
which I am thoroughly acquainted? Remember that time when Curio, the father,
lay weeping in his bed; his son, throwing himself at my feet with tears, recom-

mended to me you; he entreated me to defend you against his own father, if he de-
manded six millions of sesterces of you; for that he had been bail for you to that
amount. And he himself, burning with love, declared positively that because he
was unable to bear the misery of being separated from you, he should go into ban-
ishment. And at that time what misery of that most flourishing family did I allay,
or rather did I remove! I persuaded the father to pay the son’s debts; to release the
young man, endowed as he was with great promise of courage and ability, by the
sacrifice of part of his family estate; and to use his privileges and authority as a fa-
ther to prohibit him not only from all intimacy with, but from every opportunity
of meeting, you. When you recollected that all this was done by me, would you
have dared to provoke me by abuse if you had not been trusting to those swords
which we behold?

But let us say no more of your profligacy and debauchery. There are things

which it is not possible for me to mention with honor; but you are all the more
free for that, inasmuch as you have not scrupled to be an actor in scenes which a
modest enemy cannot bring himself to mention.

Mark now, O conscript fathers, the rest of his life, which I will touch upon rap-

idly. For my inclination hastens to arrive at those things which he did in the time
of the civil war, amid the greatest miseries of the republic and at those things
which he does every day. And I beg of you, though they are far better known to
you than they are to me, still to listen attentively, as you are doing, to my relation
of them. For in such cases as this, it is not the mere knowledge of such actions

that ought to excite the mind, but the recollection of them also. Although we must
at once go into the middle of them, lest otherwise we should be too long in com-
ing to the end.

He was very intimate with Clodius at the time of his tribuneship; he, who now

enumerates the kindnesses which he did me. He was the firebrand to handle all
conflagrations; and even in his house he attempted something. He himself well
knows what I allude to. From thence he made a journey to Alexandria, in defiance
of the authority of the Senate, and against the interests of the republic, and in
spite of religious obstacles; but he had Gabinius for his leader, with whom what-
ever he did was sure to be right. What were the circumstances of his return from
thence? what sort of return was it? He went from Egypt to the farthest extremity
of Gaul before he returned home. And what was his home? For at that time every
man had possession of his own house; and you had no house anywhere, O An-
tonius. House, do you say? what place was there in the whole world where you
could set your foot on anything that belonged to you except Misenum which you
farmed with your partners, as if it had been Sisapo? 7

7

Sisapo was a town in Spain, celebrated for some mines of
vermilion, which were farmed by a company.

You came from Gaul to stand for the quaestorship. Dare to say that you went

to your own father before you came to me. I had already received Caesar’s letters,
begging me to allow myself to accept of your excuses; and therefore, I did not al-
low you even to mention thanks. After that, I was treated with respect by you, and
you received attentions from me in your canvass for the quaestorship. And it was
at that time, indeed, that you endeavored to slay Publius Clodius in the forum,
with the approbation of the Roman people; and though you made the attempt of
your own accord, and not at my instigation, still you clearly alleged that you did
not think, unless you slew him, that you could possibly make amends to me for
all the injuries which you had done me. And this makes me wonder why you
should say that Milo did that deed at my instigation; when I never once exhorted
you to do it, who of your own accord attempted to do me the same service. Al-
though, if you had persisted in it, I should have preferred allowing the action to
be set down entirely to your own love of glory rather than to my influence.

You were elected quaestor. On this, immediately, without any resolution of

the Senate authorizing such a step, without drawing lots, without procuring any
law to be passed, you hastened to Caesar. For you thought the camp the only ref-
uge on earth for indigence, and debt, and profligacy- for all men, in short, who
were in a state of utter ruin. Then, when you had recruited your resources again
by his largesses and your own robberies (if, indeed, a person can be said to re-
cruit, who only acquires something which he may immediately squander), you

hastened, being again a beggar, to the tribuneship, in order that in that magistracy
you might, if possible, behave like your friend.

Listen now, I beseech you, O conscript fathers, not to those things which he

did indecently and profligately to his own injury and to his own disgrace as a pri-
vate individual; but to the actions which he did impiously and wickedly against us
and our fortunes- that is to say, against the whole republic. For it is from his wick-
edness that you will find that the beginning of all these evils had arisen.

For when, in the consulship of Lucius Lentulus and Marcus Marcellus, you,

on the first of January, were anxious to prop up the republic, which was tottering
and almost falling, and were willing to consult the interests of Caius Caesar him-
self, if he would have acted like a man in his senses, then this fellow opposed to
your counsels his tribuneship, which he had sold and handed over to the pur-
chaser, and exposed his own neck to that axe under which many have suffered for
smaller crimes. It was against you, O Marcus Antonius, that the Senate, while still
in the possession of its rights, before so many of its luminaries were extinguished,
passed that decree which, in accordance with the usage of our ancestors, is at
times passed against an enemy who is a citizen. And have you dared, before these
conscript fathers, to say anything against me, when I have been pronounced by
this order to be the saviour of my country, and when you have been declared by it
to be an enemy of the republic? The mention of that wickedness of yours has
been interrupted, but the recollection of it has not been effaced. As long as the
race of men, as long as the name of the Roman people shall exist (and that, unless

it is prevented from being so by your means, will be everlasting), so long will that
most mischievous interposition of your veto be spoken of. What was there that
was being done by the Senate either ambitiously or rashly, when you, one single
young man, forbade the whole order to pass decrees concerning the safety of the
republic? and when you did so, not once only, but repeatedly? nor would you al-
low anyone to plead with you in behalf of the authority of the Senate; and yet,
what did anyone entreat of you, except that you would not desire the republic to
be entirely overthrown and destroyed; when neither the chief men of the state by
their entreaties, nor the elders by their warnings, nor the Senate in a full house by
pleading with you, could move you from the determination which you had al-
ready sold and as it were delivered to the purchaser? Then it was, after having
tried many other expedients previously, that a blow was of necessity struck at you
which had been struck at only few men before you, and which none of them had
ever survived. Then it was that this order armed the consuls, and the rest of the
magistrates who were invested with either military or civil command, against
you, and you never would have escaped them, if you had not taken refuge in the
camp of Caesar.

It was you, I say, O Marcus Antonius, who gave Caius Caesar, desirous as he

already was to throw everything into confusion, the principal pretext for waging
war against his country. For what other pretence did he allege? what cause did he
give for his own most frantic resolution and action, except that the power of inter-
position by the veto had been disregarded, the privileges of the tribunes taken

away, and Antonius’s rights abridged by the Senate? I say nothing of how false,
how trivial these pretences were; especially when there could not possibly be any
reasonable cause whatever to justify anyone in taking up arms against his country.
But I have nothing to do with Caesar. You must unquestionably allow, that the
cause of that ruinous war existed in your person.

O miserable man if you are aware, more miserable still if you are not aware,

that this is recorded in writings, is handed down to men’s recollection, that our
very latest posterity in the most distant ages will never forget this fact, that the
consuls were expelled from Italy, and with them Cnaeus Pompeius, who was the
glory and light of the empire of the Roman people; that all the men of consular
rank, whose health would allow them to share in that disaster and that flight, and
the praetors, and men of praetorian rank, and the tribunes of the people, and a
great part of the Senate, and all the flower of the youth of the city, and, in a word,
the republic itself was driven out and expelled from its abode. As, then, there is in
seeds the cause which produces trees and plants, so of this most lamentable war
you were the seed. Do you, O conscript fathers, grieve that these armies of the Ro-
man people have been slain? It is Antonius who slew them. Do you regret your
most illustrious citizens? It is Antonius, again, who has deprived you of them.
The authority of this order is overthrown; it is Antonius who has overthrown it.
Everything, in short, which we have seen since that time (and what misfortune is
there that we have not seen?) we shall, if we argue rightly, attribute wholly to An-
tonius. As Helen was to the Trojans, so has that man been to this republic- the

cause of war, the cause of mischief, the cause of ruin. The rest of his tribuneship
was like the beginning. He did everything which the Senate had labored to pre-
vent, as being impossible to be done consistently with the safety of the republic.
And see, now, how gratuitously wicked he was even in accomplishing his wicked-
ness.

He restored many men who had fallen under misfortune. Among them no

mention was made of his uncle. If he were severe, why was he not so to every-
one? If he was merciful, why was he not merciful to his own relations? But I say
nothing of the rest. He restored Licinius Lenticula, a man who had been con-
demned for gambling, and who was a fellow-gamester of his own. As if he could
not play with a condemned man; but in reality, in order to pay by a straining of
the law in his favor, what he had lost by the dice. What reason did you allege to
the Roman people why it was desirable that he should be restored? I suppose you
said that he was absent when the prosecution was instituted against him; that the
cause was decided without his having been heard in his defence; that there was
not by a law any judicial proceeding established with reference to gambling; that
he had been put down by violence or by arms; or lastly, as was said in the case of
your uncle, that the tribunal had been bribed with money. Nothing of this sort was
said. Then he was a good man, and one worthy of the republic. That, indeed,
would have been nothing to the purpose, but still, since being condemned does
not go for much, I would forgive you if that were the truth. Does not he restore to
the full possession of his former privileges the most worthless man possible- one

who would not hesitate to play at dice even in the forum, and who had been con-
victed under the law which exists respecting gambling- does not he declare in the
most open manner his own propensities?

Then in this same tribuneship, when Caesar while on his way into Spain had

given him Italy to trample on, what journeys did he make in every direction! how
did he visit the municipal towns! I know that I am only speaking of matters which
have been discussed in everyone’s conversation, and that the things which I am
saying and am going to say are better known to everyone who was in Italy at that
time, than to me, who was not. Still I mention the particulars of his conduct, al-
though my speech cannot possibly come up to your personal knowledge. When
was such wickedness ever heard of as existing upon earth? or shamelessness? or
such open infamy?

The tribune of the people was borne along in a chariot, lictors crowned with

laurel preceded him; among whom, on an open litter, was carried an actress;
whom honorable men, citizens of the different municipalities, coming out from
their towns under compulsion to meet him, saluted not by the name by which she
was well known on the stage, but by that of Volumnia. 8 A car followed full of

8

She was a courtesan who had been enfranchised by her
master Volumnius. The name of Volumnia was dear to the
Romans as that of the wife of Coriolanus, to whose entreaties
he had yielded when he drew off his army from the

pimps; then a lot of debauched companions; and then his mother, utterly ne-
glected, followed the mistress of her profligate son, as if she had been her daugh-
ter-in-law. O the disastrous fecundity of that miserable woman! With the marks of
such wickedness as this did that fellow stamp every municipality, and prefecture,
and colony, and, in short, the whole of Italy.

To find fault with the rest of his actions, O conscript fathers, is difficult, and

somewhat unsafe. He was occupied in war; he glutted himself with the slaughter
of citizens who bore no resemblance to himself. He was fortunate- if at least there
can be any good fortune in wickedness. But since we wish to show a regard for
the veterans, although the cause of the soldiers is very different from yours; they
followed their chief; you went to seek for a leader; still (that I may not give you
any pretence for stirring up odium against me among them), I will say nothing of
the nature of the war.

When victorious, you returned with the legions from Thessaly to Brundusium.

There you did not put me to death. It was a great kindness! For I confess that you
could have done it. Although there was no one of those men who were with you
at that time, who did not think that I ought to be spared. For so great is men’s af-
fection for their country, that I was sacred even in the eyes of your legions, be-

neighborhood of Rome.

cause they recollected that the country had been saved by me. However, grant that
you did give me what you did not take away from me; and that I have my life as a
present from you, since it was not taken from me by you; was it possible for me,
after all your insults, to regard that kindness of yours as I regarded it at first, espe-
cially after you saw that you must hear this reply from me?

You came to Brundusium, to the bosom and embraces of your actress. What is

the matter? Am I speaking falsely? How miserable is it not to be able to deny a
fact which it is disgraceful to confess! If you had no shame before the municipal
towns, had you none even before your veteran army? For what soldier was there
who did not see her at Brundusium? who was there who did not know that she
had come so many days’ journey to congratulate you? who was there who did not
grieve that he was so late in finding out how worthless a man he had been follow-
ing?

Again you made a tour through Italy, with that same actress for your compan-

ion. Cruel and miserable was the way in which you led your soldiers into the
towns; shameful was the pillage in every city, of gold and silver, and above all, of
wine. And besides all this, while Caesar knew nothing about it, as he was at Alex-
andria, Antonius, by the kindness of Caesar’s friends, was appointed his master of
the horse. Then he thought that he could live with Hippia 9 by virtue of his office,

9

This is a play on the name Hippia, as derived from ippos, a

and that he might give horses which were the property of the state to Sergius the
buffoon. At that time he had selected for himself to live in, not the house which
he now dishonors, but that of Marcus Piso. Why need I mention his decrees, his
robberies, the possessions of inheritances which were given him, and those, too,
which were seized by him? What compelled him; he did not know where to turn.
That great inheritance from Lucius Rubrius, and that other from Lucius Turselius,
had not yet come to him. He had not yet succeeded as an unexpected heir to the
place of Cnaeus Pompeius, and of many others who were absent. He was forced
to live like a robber, having nothing beyond what he could plunder from others.

However, we will say nothing of these things, which are acts of a more hardy

sort of villany. Let us speak rather of his meaner descriptions of worthlessness.
You, with those jaws of yours, and those sides of yours, and that strength of body
suited to a gladiator, drank such quantities of wine at the marriage of Hippia, that
you were forced to vomit the next day in the sight of the Roman people. O action
disgraceful not merely to see, but even to hear of! If this had happened to you at
supper amid those vast drinking-cups of yours, who would not have thought it
scandalous? But in an assembly of the Roman people, a man holding a public of-
fice, a master of the horse, to whom it would have been disgraceful even to belch,

horse.

vomiting filled his own bosom and the whole tribunal with fragments of what he
had been eating reeking with wine. But he himself confesses this among his other
disgraceful acts. Let us proceed to his more splendid offences.

Caesar came back from Alexandria, fortunate, as he seemed at least to him-

self; but in my opinion no one can be fortunate who is unfortunate for the repub-
lic. The spear was set up in front of the temple of Jupiter Stator, and the property
of Cnaeus Pompeius Magnus- (miserable that I am, for even now that my tears
have ceased to flow, my grief remains deeply implanted in my heart)- the prop-
erty, I say, of Cnaeus Pompeius the Great was submitted to the pitiless voice of
the auctioneer. On that one occasion the state forgot its slavery, and groaned
aloud; and though men’s minds were enslaved, as everything was kept under by
fear, still the groans of the Roman people were free. While all men were waiting
to see who would be so impious, who would be so mad, who would be so de-
clared an enemy to gods and to men as to dare to mix himself up with that wicked
auction, no one was found except Antonius, even though there were plenty of
men collected round that spear 10 who would have dared anything else. One man
alone was found to dare to do that which the audacity of everyone else had shrunk
from and shuddered at. Were you, then, seized with such stupidity- or, I should

10

The custom of erecting a spear wherever an auction was
held is well known; it is said to have arisen from the ancient
practice of selling under a spear the booty acquired in war.

rather say, with such insanity- as not to see that if you, being of the rank in which
you were born, acted as a broker at all, and above all as a broker in the case of
Pompeius’s property, you would be execrated and hated by the Roman people,
and that all gods and all men must at once become and forever continue hostile to
you? But with what violence did that glutton immediately proceed to take posses-
sion of the property of that man, to whose valor it had been owing that the Roman
people had been more terrible to foreign nations, while its justice had made it
dearer to them.

When, therefore, this fellow had begun to wallow in the treasures of that great

man, he began to exult like a buffoon in a play, who has lately been a beggar, and
has become suddenly rich. But, as some poet or other says:

“Ill-gotten gains come quickly to an end.”

It is an incredible thing, and almost a miracle, how he in a few, not months,

but days, squandered all that vast wealth. There was an immense quantity of
wine, an excessive abundance of very valuable plate, much precious apparel,
great quantities of splendid furniture, and other magnificent things in many
places, such as one was likely to see belonging to a man who was not indeed luxu-
rious, but who was very wealthy. Of all this in a few days there was nothing left.

What Charybdis was ever so voracious? Charybdis, do I say? Charybdis, if she ex-
isted at all, was only one animal. The ocean, I swear most solemnly, appears
scarcely capable of having swallowed up such numbers of things so widely scat-
tered, and distributed in such different places, with such rapidity. Nothing was
shut up, nothing sealed up, no list was made of anything. Whole storehouses were
abandoned to the most worthless of men. Actors seized on this, actresses on that;
the house was crowded with gamblers, and full of drunken men; people were
drinking all day, and that, too, in many places; there were added to all this ex-
pense (for this fellow was not invariably fortunate) heavy gambling losses. You
might see in the cellars of the slaves, couches covered with the most richly em-
broidered counterpanes of Cnaeus Pompeius. Wonder not, then, that all these
things were so soon consumed. Such profligacy as that could have devoured not
only the patrimony of one individual, however ample it might have been (as in-
deed his was), but whole cities and kingdoms.

And then his houses and gardens! Oh, the cruel audacity! Did you dare to en-

ter into that house? Did you dare to cross that most sacred threshold? and to show
your most profligate countenance to the household gods who protect that abode?
A house which for a long time no one could behold, no one could pass by without
tears! Are you not ashamed to dwell so long in that house? one in which, stupid
and ignorant as you are, still you can see nothing which it not painful to you.

When you behold those beaks of ships in the vestibule, and those warlike tro-

phies, do you fancy that you are entering into a house which belongs to you? It is

impossible. Although you are devoid of all sense and all feeling- as in truth you
are- still you are acquainted with yourself, and with your trophies, and with your
friends. Nor do I believe that you, either waking or sleeping, can ever act with
quiet sense. It is impossible but that, were you ever so drunk and frantic- as in
truth you are- when the recollection of the appearance of that illustrious man
comes across you, you should be roused from sleep by your fears, and often
stirred up to madness if awake. I pity even the walls and the roof. For what had
that house ever beheld except what was modest, except what proceeded from the
purest principles and from the most virtuous practice? For that man was, O con-
script fathers, as you yourselves know, not only illustrious abroad, but also admi-
rable at home; and not more praiseworthy for his exploits in foreign countries,
than for his domestic arrangements. Now in his house every bed-chamber is a
brothel, and every dining-room a cookshop. Although he denies this: Do not, do
not make inquiries. He is become economical. He desired that mistress of his to
take possession of whatever belonged to her, according to the laws of the Twelve
Tables. He has taken his keys from her, and turned her out of doors. What a well-
tried citizen! of what proved virtue is he! the most honorable passage in whose
life is the one when he divorced himself from this actress.

But how constantly does he harp on the expression “the consul Antonius”!

This amounts to say “that most debauched consul,” “that most worthless of men,
the consul.” For what else is Antonius? For if any dignity were implied in the
name, then, I imagine, your grandfather would sometimes have called himself

“the consul Antonius.” But he never did. My colleague, too, your own uncle,
would have called himself so. Unless you are the only Antonius. But I pass over
those offences which have no peculiar connection with the part you took in harass-
ing the republic; I return to that in which you bore so principal a share- that is, to
the civil war; and it is mainly owing to you that that was originated, and brought
to a head, and carried on.

Though you yourself took no personal share in it, partly through timidity,

partly through profligacy, you had tasted, or rather had sucked in, the blood of fel-
low-citizens: you had been in the battle of Pharsalia as a leader; you had slain Lu-
cius Domitius, a most illustrious and high-born man; you had pursued and put to
death in the most barbarous manner many men who had escaped from the battle,
and whom Caesar would perhaps have saved, as he did some others.

And after having performed these exploits, what was the reason why you did

not follow Caesar into Africa; especially when so large a portion of the war was
still remaining? And accordingly, what place did you obtain about Caesar’s per-
son after his return from Africa? What was your rank? He whose quaestor you
had been when general, whose master of the horse when he was dictator, to whom
you had been the chief cause of war, the chief instigator of cruelty, the sharer of
his plunder, his son, as you yourself said, by inheritance, proceeded against you
for the money which you owed for the house and gardens, and for the other prop-
erty which you had bought at that sale. At first you answered fiercely enough; and
that I may not appear prejudiced against you in every particular, you used a toler-

ably just and reasonable argument. “What, does Caius Caesar demand money of
me? why should he do so, any more than I should claim it of him? Was he victori-
ous without my assistance? No; and he never could have been. It was I who sup-
plied him with a pretext for civil war; it was I who proposed mischievous laws; it
was I who took up arms against the consuls and generals of the Roman people,
against the Senate and people of Rome, against the gods of the country, against its
altars and hearths, against the country itself. Has he conquered for himself alone?
Why should not those men whose common work the achievement is, have the
booty also in common?” You were only claiming your right, but what had that to
do with it? He was the more powerful of the two.

Therefore, stopping all your expostulations, he sent his soldiers to you, and to

your sureties; when all on a sudden out came that splendid catalogue of yours.
How men did laugh! That there should be so vast a catalogue, that there should be
such a numerous and various list of possessions, of all of which, with the excep-
tion of a portion of Misenum, there was nothing which the man who was putting
them up to sale could call his own. And what a miserable sight was the auction. A
little apparel of Pompeius’s, and that stained; a few silver vessels belonging to the
same man, all battered; some slaves in wretched condition; so that we grieved that
there was anything remaining to be seen of these miserable relics. This auction,
however, the heirs of Lucius Rubrius prevented from proceeding, being armed
with a decree of Caesar to that effect. The spendthrift was embarrassed. He did
not know which way to turn. It was at this very time that an assassin sent by him

was said to have been detected with a dagger in the house of Caesar. And of this
Caesar himself complained in the Senate, inveighing openly against you. Caesar
departs to Spain, having granted you a few days’ delay for making the payment,
on account of your poverty. Even then you do not follow him. Had so good a
gladiator as you retired from business so early? Can anyone, then, fear a man who
was as timid as this man in upholding his party, that is, in upholding his own for-
tunes?

After some time he at last went into Spain; but, as he says, he could not arrive

there in safety. How, then, did Dolabella manage to arrive there? Either, O An-
tonius, that cause ought never to have been undertaken, or when you had under-
taken it, it should have been maintained to the end. Thrice did Caesar fight
against his fellow-citizens; in Thessaly, in Africa, and in Spain. Dolabella was pre-
sent at all these battles. In the battle in Spain he even received a wound. If you
ask my opinion, I wish he had not been there. But still, if his design at first was
blamable, his consistency and firmness were praiseworthy. But what shall we say
of you? In the first place, the children of Cnaeus Pompeius sought to be restored
to their country. Well, this concerned the common interests of the whole party. Be-
sides that, they sought to recover their household gods, the gods of their country,
their altars, their hearths, the tutelar gods of their family; all of which you had
seized upon. And when they sought to recover those things by force of arms
which belonged to them by the laws, who was it most natural (although in unjust
and unnatural proceedings what can there be that is natural?)- still, who was it

most natural to expect would fight against the children of Cnaeus Pompeius?
Who? Why, you who had bought their property. Were you at Narbo to be sick
over the tables of your entertainers, while Dolabella was fighting your battles in
Spain?

And what return was that of yours from Narbo? He even asked why I had re-

turned so suddenly from my expedition. I have just briefly explained to you, O
conscript fathers, the reason of my return. I was desirous, if I could, to be of serv-
ice to the republic even before the first of January. For, as to your question, how I
had returned; in the first place, I returned by daylight, not in the dark; in the sec-
ond place, I returned in shoes, and in my Roman gown, not in any Gallic slippers,
or barbarian mantle. And even now you keep looking at me; and, as it seems,
with great anger. Surely you would be reconciled to me if you knew how
ashamed I am of your worthlessness, which you yourself are not ashamed of. Of
all the profligate conduct of all the world, I never saw, I never heard of any more
shameful than yours. You, who fancied yourself a master of the horse, when you
were standing for, or I should rather say begging for the consulship for the ensu-
ing year, ran in Gallic slippers and a barbarian mantle about the municipal towns
and colonies of Gaul from which we used to demand the consulship when the con-
sulship was stood for and not begged for.

But mark now the trifling character of the fellow. When about the tenth hour

of the day he had arrived at Red Rocks, he skulked into a little petty wine-shop,
and, hiding there, kept on drinking till evening. And from thence getting into a

gig and being driven rapidly to the city, he came to his own house with his head
veiled. “Who are you?” says the porter. “An express from Marcus.” He is at once
taken to the woman for whose sake he had come; and he delivered the letter to
her. And when she had read it with tears (for it was written in a very amorous
style, but the main subject of the letter was that he would have nothing to do with
that actress for the future; that he had discarded all his love for her, and trans-
ferred it to his correspondent), when she, I say, wept plentifully, this soft-hearted
man could bear it no longer; he uncovered his head and threw himself on her
neck. Oh, the worthless man (for what else can I call him? there is no more suit-
able expression for me to use)! was it for this that you disturbed the city by noc-
turnal alarms, and Italy with fears of many days’ duration, in order that you might
show yourself unexpectedly, and that a woman might see you before she hoped to
do so? And he had at home a pretence of love; but out of doors a cause more dis-
creditable still; namely, lest Lucius Plancus should sell up his sureties. But after
you had been produced in the assembly by one of the tribunes of the people, and
had replied that you had come on your own private business, you made even the
people full of jokes against you. But, however, we have said too much about tri-
fles. Let us come to more important subjects.

You went a great distance to meet Caesar on his return from Spain. You went

rapidly, you returned rapidly, in order that we might see that, if you were not
brave, you were at least active. You again became intimate with him; I am sure I
do not know how. Caesar had this peculiar characteristic; whoever he knew to be

utterly ruined by debt, and needy, even if he knew him also to be an audacious
and worthless man, he willingly admitted him to his intimacy. You then, being ad-
mirably recommended to him by these circumstances, were ordered to be ap-
pointed consul, and that, too, as his own colleague. I do not make any complaint
against Dolabella, who was at that time acting under compulsion, and was cajoled
and deceived. But who is there who does not know with what great perfidy both
of you treated Dolabella in that business? Caesar induced him to stand for the con-
sulship. After having promised it to him, and pledged himself to aid him, he pre-
vented his getting it, and transferred it to himself. And you indorsed his treachery
with your own eagerness.

The first of January arrives. We are convened in the Senate. Dolabella in-

veighed against him with much more fluency and premeditation than I am doing
now. And what things were they which he said in his anger, O ye good gods! First
of all, after Caesar had declared that before he departed he would order Dolabella
to be made consul (and they deny that he was a king who was always doing and
saying something of this sort)- but after Caesar had said this, then this virtuous
augur said that he was invested with a pontificate of that sort that he was able, by
means of the auspices, either to hinder or to vitiate the comitia, just as he pleased;
and he declared that he would do so. And here, in the first place, remark the in-
credible stupidity of the man. For what do you mean? Could you not just as well
have done what you said you had now the power to do by the privileges with
which that pontificate had invested you, even if you were not an augur, if you

were consul? Perhaps you could even do it more easily. For we augurs have only
the power of announcing that the auspices are being observed, but the consuls and
other magistrates have the right also of observing them whenever they choose. Be
it so. You said this out of ignorance. For one must not demand prudence from a
man who is never sober. But still remark his impudence. Many months before, he
said in the Senate that he would either prevent the comitia from assembling for
the election of Dolabella by means of the auspices, or that he would do what he
actually did do. Can anyone divine beforehand what defect there will be in the
auspices, except the man who has already determined to observe the heavens?
which in the first place it is forbidden by law to do at the time of the comitia. And
if anyone has been observing the heavens, he is bound to give notice of it, not af-
ter the comitia are assembled, but before they are held. But this man’s ignorance
is joined to impudence, nor does he know what a augur ought to know, nor do
what a modest man ought to do. And just recollect the whole of his conduct dur-
ing his consulship from that day up to the ides of March. What lictor was ever so
humble, so abject? He himself had no power at all; he begged everything of oth-
ers; and thrusting his head into the hind part of his litter, he begged favors of his
colleagues, to sell them himself afterward.

Behold, the day of the comitia for the election of Dolabella arrives. The pre-

rogative century draws its lot. He is quiet. The vote is declared; he is still silent.
The first class is called. 11 Its vote is declared. Then, as is the usual course, the
votes are announced. Then the second class. And all this is done faster than I have

told it. When the business is over, that excellent augur (you would say he must be
Caius Laelius) says, “We adjourn it to another day.” Oh, the monstrous impu-
dence of such a proceeding! What had you seen? what had you perceived? what
had you heard? For you did not say that you had been observing the heavens, and
indeed you do not say so this day. That defect, then, has arisen, which you on the
first of January had already foreseen would arise, and which you had predicted so
long before. Therefore, in truth, you have made a false declaration respecting the
auspices, to your own great misfortune, I hope, rather than to that of the republic.
You laid the Roman people under the obligations of religion; you as augur inter-
rupted an augur; you as consul interrupted a consul by a false declaration concern-
ing the auspices.

I will say no more, lest I should seem to be pulling to pieces the acts of Dola-

bella; which must inevitably some time or other be brought before our college.
But take notice of the arrogance and insolence of the fellow. As long as you
please, Dolabella is a consul irregularly elected; again, while you please, he is a
consul elected with all proper regard to the auspices. If it means nothing when an
augur gives this notice in those words in which you gave notice, then confess that

11

There seems some corruption here. Orellius apparently
thinks the case hopeless.

you, when you said, “We adjourn this to another day,” were not sober. But if
those words have any meaning, then I, an augur, demand of my colleague to
know what that meaning is.

But lest by any chance, while enumerating his numerous exploits, our speech

should pass over the finest action of Marcus Antonius, let us come to the Luper-
calia.

He does not dissemble, O conscript fathers; it is plain that he is agitated; he

perspires; he turns pale. Let him do what he pleases, provided he is not sick, and
does not behave as he did in the Minucian colonnade. What defence can be made
for such beastly behavior? I wish to hear, that I may see the fruit of those high
wages of that rhetorician, of that land given in Leontini. Your colleague was sit-
ting in the rostra, clothed in purple robe, on a golden chair, wearing a crown. You
mount the steps; you approach his chair (if you were a priest of Pan, you ought to
have recollected that you were consul too); you display a diadem. There is a
groan over the whole forum. Where did the diadem come from? For you had not
picked it up when lying on the ground, but you had brought if from home with
you, a premeditated and deliberately planned wickedness. You placed the diadem
on his head amidst the groans of the people; he rejected it amidst great applause.
You then alone, O wicked man, were found, both to advise the assumption of
kingly power, and to wish you have him for your master who was your colleague;
and also to try what the Roman people might be able to bear and to endure. More-
over, you even sought to move his pity; you threw yourself at his feet as a suppli-

cant; begging for what? to be a slave? You might beg it for yourself, when you
had lived in such a way from the time that you were a boy that you could bear
everything, and would find no difficulty in being a slave; but certainly you had no
commission from the Roman people to try for such a thing for them.

Oh, how splendid was that eloquence of yours, when you harangued the peo-

ple stark naked! What could be more foul than this? more shameful than this?
more deserving of every sort of punishment? Are you waiting for me to prick you
more? This that I am saying must tear you and bring blood enough if you have
any feeling at all. I am afraid that I may be detracting from the glory of some
most eminent men. Still my indignation shall find a voice. What can be more
scandalous than for that man to live who placed a diadem on a man’s head, when
everyone confesses that that man was deservedly slain who rejected it? And,
moreover, he caused it to be recorded in the annals, under the head of Lupercalia,
“That Marcus Antonius, the consul, by command of the people, had offered the
kingdom to Caius Caesar, perpetual dictator; and that Caesar had refused to ac-
cept it.” I now am not much surprised at your seeking to disturb the general tran-
quillity; at your hating not only the city but the light of day; and at your living
with a pack of abandoned robbers, disregarding the day, and yet regarding noth-
ing beyond the day. 12 For where can you be safe in peace? What place can there

12

The Latin is, “non solum de die, sed etiam in diem, vivere;”
which the commentators explain, “De die is to feast every

be for you where laws and courts of justice have sway, both of which you, as far
as in you lay, destroyed by the substitution of kingly power? Was it for this that
Lucius Tarquinius was driven out; that Spurius Cassius, and Spurius Maelius, and
Marcus Manlius were slain; that many years afterward a king might be estab-
lished at Rome by Marcus Antonius, though the bare idea was impiety? However,
let us return to the auspices.

With respect to all the things which Caesar was intending to do in the Senate

on the ides of March, I ask whether you have done anything? I heard, indeed, that
you had come down prepared, because you thought that I intended to speak about
your having made a false statement respecting the auspices, though it was still
necessary for us to respect them. The fortune of the Roman people saved us from
that day. Did the death of Caesar also put an end to your opinion respecting the
auspices? But I have come to mention that occasion which must be allowed to pre-
cede those matters which I had begun to discuss. What a flight was that of yours!
What alarm was yours on that memorable day! How, from the consciousness of
your wickedness, did you despair of your life! How, while flying, were you en-

day and all day. Banquets de die are those which begin before
the regular hour.” (Like Horace’s “Partem solido demere de
die.”) “To live in diem is to live so as to have no thought for
the future.”- Graevius.

abled secretly to get home by the kindness of those men who wished to save you,
thinking you would show more sense than you do! Oh, how vain have at all times
been my too true predictions of the future! I told those deliverers of ours in the
Capitol, when they wished me to go to you to exhort you to defend the republic,
that as long as you were in fear you would promise everything, but that as soon as
you had emancipated yourself from alarm you would be yourself again. There-
fore, while the rest of the men of consular rank were going backward and forward
to you, I adhered to my opinion, nor did I see you at all that day, or the next; nor
did I think it possible for an alliance between virtuous citizens and a most unprin-
cipled enemy to be made, so as to last, by any treaty or engagement whatever.
The third day I came into the temple of Tellus, even then very much against my
will, as armed men were blockading all the approaches. What a day was that for
you, O Marcus Antonius! Although you showed yourself all on a sudden an en-
emy to me; still I pity you for having envied yourself.

What a man, O ye immortal gods! and how great a man might you have been,

if you had been able to preserve the inclination you displayed that day; we should
still have peace which was made then by the pledge of a hostage, a boy of noble
birth, the grandson of Marcus Bambalio. Although it was fear that was then mak-
ing you a good citizen, which is never a lasting teacher of duty; your own audac-
ity, which never departs from you as long as you are free from fear, has made you
a worthless one. Although even at that time, when they thought you an excellent
man, though I indeed differed from that opinion, you behaved with the greatest

wickedness while presiding at the funeral of the tyrant, if that ought to be called a
funeral. All that fine panegyric was yours, that commiseration was yours, that ex-
hortation was yours. It was you- you, I say- who hurled those firebrands, both
those with which your friend himself was nearly burned, and those by which the
house of Lucius Bellienus was set on fire and destroyed. It was you who let loose
those attacks of abandoned men, slaves for the most part, which we repelled by
violence and our own personal exertions; it was you who set them on to attack
our houses. And yet you, as if you had wiped off all the soot and smoke in the en-
suing days, carried those excellent resolutions in the Capitol, that no document
conferring any exemption, or granting any favor, should be published after the
ides of March. You recollect yourself, what you said about the exiles; you know
what you said about the exemption; but the best thing of all was, that you forever
abolished the name of the dictatorship in the republic. Which act appeared to
show that you had conceived such a hatred of kingly power that you took away
all fear of it for the future, on account of him who had been the last dictator.

To other men the republic now seemed established, but it did not appear so at

all to me, as I was afraid of every sort of shipwreck, as long as you were at the
helm. Have I been deceived? or, was it possible for that man long to continue un-
like himself? While you were all looking on, documents were fixed up over the
whole Capitol, and exemptions were being sold, not merely to individuals, but to
entire states. The freedom of the city was also being given now not to single per-
sons only, but to whole provinces. Therefore, if these acts are to stand- and stand

they cannot if the republic stands too- then, O conscript fathers, you have lost
whole provinces; and not the revenues only, but the actual empire of the Roman
people has been diminished by a market this man held in his own house.

Where are the seven hundred millions of sesterces which were entered in the

account-books which are in the temple of Ops? a sum lamentable indeed, as to the
means by which it was procured, but still one which, if it were not restored to
those to whom it belonged, might save us from taxes. And how was it, that when
you owed forty millions of sesterces on the fifteenth of March, you had ceased to
owe them by the first of April? Those things are quite countless which were pur-
chased of different people, not without your knowledge; but there was one excel-
lent decree posted up in the Capitol affecting king Deiotarus, a most devoted
friend to the Roman people? And when that decree was posted up, there was no
one who, amid all his indignation, could restrain his laughter. For who ever was a
more bitter enemy to another than Caesar was to Deiotarus? He was as hostile to
him as he was to this order, to the equestrian order, to the people of Massilia, and
to all men whom he knew to look on the republic of the Roman people with at-
tachment. But this man, who neither present nor absent could ever obtain from
him any favor or justice while he was alive, became quite an influential man with
him when he was dead. When present with him in his house he had called for him
though he was his host, he had made him give in his accounts of his revenue, he
had exacted money from him; he had established one of his Greek retainers in his
tetrarchy, and he had taken Armenia from him which had been given to him by

the Senate. While he was alive he deprived him of all these things; now that he is
dead, he gives them back again. And in what words? At one time he says, “that it
appears to him to be just....” at another, “that it appears not to be unjust....” What
a strange combination of words! But while alive (I know this, for I always sup-
ported Deiotarus, who was at a distance), he never said anything which we were
asking for, for him, appeared just to him. A bond for ten millions of sesterces was
entered into in the women’s apartment (where many things have been sold, and
are still being sold), by his ambassadors, well-meaning men, but timid and inexpe-
rienced in business, without my advice or that of the rest of the hereditary friends
of the monarch. And I advise you to consider carefully what you intend to do
with reference to this bond. For the king himself, of his own accord, without wait-
ing for any of Caesar’s memoranda, the moment that he heard of his death, recov-
ered his own rights by his own courage and energy. He, like a wise man, knew
that this was always the law, that those men from whom the things which tyrants
had taken away had been taken, might recover them when the tyrants were slain.
No lawyer, therefore, not even he who is your lawyer and yours alone, and by
whose advice you do all these things, will say that anything is due to you by vir-
tue of that bond for those things which had been recovered before that bond was
executed. For he did not purchase them of you; but, before you undertook to sell
him his own property, he had taken possession of it. He was a man- we, indeed,
deserve to be despised, who hate the author of the actions, but uphold the actions
themselves.

Why need I mention the countless mass of papers, the innumerable auto-

graphs which have been brought forward? writings of which there are imitators
who sell their forgeries as openly as if they were gladiator’s play-bills. Therefore,
there are now such heaps of money piled up in that man’s house, that it is
weighed out instead of being counted. 13 But how blind is avarice! Lately, too, a
document has been posted up by which the most wealthy cities of the Cretans are
released from tribute; and by which it is ordained that after the expiration of the
consulship of Marcus Brutus, Crete shall cease to be a province. Are you in your
senses? Ought you not to be put in confinement? Was it possible for there really
to be a decree of Caesar’s exempting Crete after the departure of Marcus Brutus,
when Brutus had no connection whatever with Crete while Caesar was alive? But
by the sale of this decree (that you may not, O conscript fathers, think it wholly in-
effectual) you have lost the province of Crete. There was nothing in the whole
world which anyone wanted to buy that this fellow was not ready to sell.

13

The Latin is, “non solum de die, sed etiam in diem, vivere;”
which the commentators explain, “De die is to feast every
day and all day. Banquets de die are those which begin
before the regular hour.” (Like Horace’s “Partem solido
demere de die.”) “To live in diem is to live so as to have no
thought for the future.”- Graevius.

Caesar, too, I suppose, made the law about the exiles which you have posted

up. I do not wish to press upon anyone in misfortune; I only complain, in the first
place, that the return of those men has had discredit thrown upon it, whose cause
Caesar judged to be different from that of the rest; and in the second place, I do
not know why you do not mete out the same measure to all. For there cannot be
more than three or four left. Why do not they who are in similar misfortune enjoy
a similar degree of your mercy? Why do you treat them as you treated your un-
cle? about whom you refused to pass a law when you were passing one about all
the rest; and whom at the same time you encouraged to stand for the censorship,
and instigated him to a canvass, which excited the ridicule and the complaint of
everyone.

But why did you not hold that comitia? Was it because a tribune of the people

announced that there had been an ill-omened flash of lightning seen? When you
have any interest of your own to serve, then auspices are all nothing; but when it
is only your friends who are concerned, then you become scrupulous. What
more? Did you not also desert him in the matter of the septemvirate? 14 “Yes, for

14

The septemviri, at full length septemviri epulones or
epulonum, were originally triumviri. They were first created
B.C. 198, to attend to the epulum Jovis, and the banquets
given in honor of the other gods, which duty had originally
belonged to the pontifices. Julius Caesar added three more,

he interfered with me.” What were you afraid of? I suppose you were afraid that
you would be able to refuse him nothing if he were restored to the full possession
of his rights. You loaded him with every species of insult, a man whom you ought
to have considered in the place of a father to you, if you had had any piety or natu-
ral affection at all. You put away his daughter, your own cousin, having already
looked out and provided yourself beforehand with another. That was not enough.
You accused a most chaste woman of misconduct. What can go beyond this? Yet
you were not content with this. In a very full Senate held on the first of January,
while your uncle was present, you dared to say that this was your reason for ha-
tred of Dolabella, that you had ascertained that he had committed adultery with
your cousin and your wife. Who can decide whether it was more shameless of
you to make such profligate and such impious statements against that unhappy
woman in the Senate, or more wicked to make them against Dolabella, or more
scandalous to make them in the presence of her father, or more cruel to make
them at all?

but that alteration did not last. They formed a collegium, and
were one of the four great religious corporations at Rome with
the pontifices, the augures, and the quindecemviri. Smith,
Dictionary of Antiquities, v. Epulones.

However, let us return to the subject of Caesar’s written papers. How were

they verified by you? For the acts of Caesar were for peace’s sake confirmed by
the Senate; that is to say, the acts which Caesar had really done, not those which
Antonius said that Caesar had done. Where do all these come from? By whom are
they produced and vouched for? If they are false, why are they ratified? If they
are true, why are they sold? But the vote which was come to enjoined you, after
the first of June, to make an examination of Caesar’s acts with the assistance of a
council. What council did you consult? whom did you ever invite to help you?
what was the first of June that you waited for? Was it that day on which you, hav-
ing travelled all through the colonies where the veterans were settled, returned es-
corted by a band of armed men?

Oh, what a splendid progress of yours was that in the months of April and

May, when you attempted even to lead a colony to Capua! How you made your
escape from thence, or rather how you barely made your escape, we all know.
And now you are still threatening that city. I wish you would try, and we should
not then be forced to say “barely.” However, what a splendid progress of yours
that was! Why need I mention your preparations for banquets, why your frantic
hard drinking? Those things are only an injury to yourself; these are injuries to us.
We thought that a great blow was inflicted on the republic when the Campanian
district was released from the payment of taxes, in order to be given to the
soldiery; but you have divided it among your partners in drunkenness and gam-
bling. I tell you, O conscript fathers, that a lot of buffoons and actresses have

been settled in the district of Campania. Why should I now complain of what has
been done in the district of Leontini? Although formerly these lands of Campania
and Leontini were considered part of the patrimony of the Roman people, and
were productive of great revenue, and very fertile. You gave your physician three
thousand acres; what would you have done if he had cured you? and two thou-
sand to your master of oratory; what would you have done if he had been able to
make you eloquent? However, let us return to your progress, and to Italy.

You led a colony to Casilinum, a place to which Caesar had previously led

one. You did indeed consult me by letter about the colony of Capua (but I should
have given you the same answer about Casilinum), whether you could legally
lead a new colony to a place where there was a colony already. I said that a new
colony could not be legally conducted to an existing colony, which had been es-
tablished with a due observance of the auspices, as long as it remained in a flour-
ishing state; but I wrote you word that new colonists might be enrolled among the
old ones. But you, elated and insolent, disregarding all the respect due to the aus-
pices, led a colony to Casilinum, whither one had been previously led a few years
before; in order to erect your standard there, and to mark out the line of the new
colony with a plough. And by that plough you almost grazed the gate of Capua,
so as to diminish the territory of that flourishing colony. After this violation of all
religious observances, you hasten off to the estate of Marcus Varro, a most consci-
entious and upright man, at Casinum. By what right? with what face do you do
this? By just the same, you will say, as that by which you entered on the estates of

the heirs of Lucius Rubrius, or of the heirs of Lucius Turselius, or on other innu-
merable possessions. If you got the right from any auction, let the auction have all
the force to which it is entitled; let writings be of force, provided they are the writ-
ings of Caesar, and not your own; writings by which you are bound, not those by
which you have released yourself from obligation.

But who says that the estate of Varro at Casinum was ever sold at all? who

ever saw any notice of that auction? who ever heard the voice of the auctioneer?
You say that you sent a man to Alexandria to buy it of Caesar. It was too long to
wait for Caesar himself to come! But who ever heard (and there was no man
about whose safety more people were anxious) that any part whatever of Varro’s
property had been confiscated? What? what shall we say if Caesar even wrote
you that you were to give it up? What can be said strong enough for such enor-
mous impudence? Remove for a while those swords which we see around us. You
shall now see that the cause of Caesar’s auctions is one thing, and that of your
confidence and rashness is another. For not only shall the owner drive you from
that estate, but any one of his friends, or neighbors, or hereditary connections, and
any agent, will have the right to do so.

But how many days did he spend revelling in the most scandalous manner in

that villa! From the third hour there was one scene of drinking, gambling, and
vomiting. Alas for the unhappy house itself! how different a master from its for-
mer one has it fallen to the share of! Although, how is he the master at all? but
still by how different a person has it been occupied! For Marcus Varro used it as a

place of retirement for his studies, not as a theatre for his lusts. What noble discus-
sions used to take place in that villa! what ideas were originated there! what writ-
ings were composed there! The laws of the Roman people, the memorials of our
ancestors, the consideration of all wisdom and all learning, were the topics that
used to be dwelt on then; but now, while you were the intruder there (for I will
not call you the master), every place was resounding with the voices of drunken
men; the pavements were floating with wine; the walls were dripping; nobly-born
boys were mixing with the basest hirelings; prostitutes with mothers of families.
Men came from Casinum, from Aquinum, from Interamna to salute him. No one
was admitted. That, indeed, was proper. For the ordinary marks of respect were
unsuited to the most profligate of men. When going from thence to Rome he ap-
proached Aquinum, a pretty numerous company (for it is a populous municipal-
ity) came out to meet him. But he was carried through the town in a covered litter,
as if he had been dead. The people of Aquinum acted foolishly, no doubt; but still
they were in his road. What did the people of Anagnia do? who, although they
were out of his line of road, came down to meet him, in order to pay him their re-
spects, as if he were consul. It is an incredible thing to say, but still it was only
too notorious at the time, that he returned nobody’s salutation; especially as he
had two men of Anagnia with him, Mustela and Laco; one of whom had the care
of his swords, and the other of his drinking-cups.

Why should I mention the threats and insults with which he inveighed against

the people of Teanum Sidicinum, with which he harassed the men of Puteoli, be-

cause they had adopted Caius Cassius and the Bruti as their patrons? a choice dic-
tated, in truth, by great wisdom, and great zeal, benevolence, and affection for
them; not by violence and force of arms, by which men have been compelled to
choose you, and Basilus, and others like you both- men whom no one would
choose to have for his own clients, much less to be their client himself.

In the mean time, while you yourself were absent, what a day was that for

your colleague when he overturned that tomb in the forum, which you were accus-
tomed to regard with veneration! And when that action was announced to you,
you- as is agreed upon by all who were with you at the time- fainted away. What
happened afterward I know not. I imagine that terror and arms got the mastery. At
all events, you dragged your colleague down from his heaven; and you rendered
him, not even now like yourself, at all events very unlike his own former self.

After that what a return was that of yours to Rome! How great was the agita-

tion of the whole city! We recollected Cinna being too powerful; after him we had
seen Sylla with absolute authority, and we had lately beheld Caesar acting as
king. There were perhaps swords, but they were sheathed, and they were not very
numerous. But how great and how barbaric a procession is yours! Men follow
you in battle array with drawn swords; we see whole litters full of shields borne
along. And yet by custom, O conscript fathers, we have become inured and cal-
lous to these things. When on the first of June we wished to come to the Senate,
as it had been ordained, we were suddenly frightened and forced to flee. But he,
having no need of a Senate, did not miss any of us, and rather rejoiced at our de-

parture, and immediately proceeded to those marvellous exploits of his. He who
had defended the memoranda of Caesar for the sake of his own profit, overturned
the laws of Caesar- and good laws, too- for the sake of being able to agitate the re-
public. He increased the number of years that magistrates were to enjoy their
provinces; moreover, though he was bound to be the defender of the acts of Cae-
sar, he rescinded them both with reference to public and private transactions.

In public transactions nothing is more authoritative than law; in private affairs

the most valid of all deeds is a will. Of the laws, some he abolished without giv-
ing the least notice; others he gave notice of bills to abolish. Wills he annulled,
though they have been at all times held sacred even in the case of the very mean-
est of the citizens. As for the statues and pictures which Caesar bequeathed to the
people, together with his gardens, those he carried away, some to the house which
belonged to Pompeius, and some to Scipio’s villa.

And are you, then, diligent in doing honor to Caesar’s memory? Do you love

him even now that he is dead? What greater honor had he obtained than that of
having a holy cushion, an image, a temple, and a priest? As then Jupiter, and
Mars, and Quirinus have priests, so Marcus Antonius is the priest of the god
Julius. Why, then, do you delay? why are not you inaugurated? Choose a day; se-
lect someone to inaugurate you; we are colleagues; no one will refuse. O you de-
testable man, whether you are the priest of a tyrant, or of a dead man! I ask you,
then, whether you are ignorant what day this is? Are you ignorant that yesterday
was the fourth day of the Roman games in the Circus? and that you yourself sub-

mitted a motion to the people, that a fifth day should be added besides, in honor
of Caesar? Why are we not all clad in the praetexta? Why are we permitting the
honor which by your law was appointed for Caesar to be deserted? Had you no
objection to so holy a day being polluted by the addition of supplications, while
you did not choose it to be so by the addition of ceremonies connected with a sa-
cred cushion? Either take away religion in every case or preserve it in every case.

You will ask whether I approve of his having a sacred cushion, a temple, and

a priest? I approved of none of those things. But you, who are defending the acts
of Caesar, what reason can you give for defending some, and disregarding others?
unless, indeed, you choose to admit that you measure everything by your own
gain, and not by his dignity. What will you now reply to these arguments (for I
am waiting to witness your eloquence; I knew your grandfather, who was a most
eloquent man, but I know you to be a more undisguised speaker than he was; he
never harangued the people naked; but we have seen your breast, man, without
disguise as you are)? Will you make any reply to these statements? will you dare
to open your mouth at all? Can you find one single article in this long speech of
mine, to which you trust that you can make any answer? However, we will say no
more of what is past.

But this single day, this very day that now is, this very moment while I am

speaking, defend your conduct during this very moment, if you can. Why has the
Senate been surrounded with a belt of armed men? Why are your satellites listen-
ing to me sword in hand? Why are not the folding-doors of the temple of Concord

open? Why do you bring men of all nations the most barbarous, Ityreans, armed
with arrows, into the forum? He says that he does so as a guard. Is it not, then, bet-
ter to perish a thousand times than to be unable to live in one’s own city without a
guard of armed men? But believe me, there is no protection in that; a man must
be defended by the affection and good-will of his fellow-citizens, not by arms.
The Roman people will take them from you, will wrest them from your hands; I
wish that they may do so while we are still safe. But however you treat us, as long
as you adopt those counsels, it is impossible for you, believe me, to last long. In
truth, that wife of yours, who is so far removed from covetousness, and whom I
mention without intending any slight to her, has been too long owing 15 her third
payment to the state. The Roman people has men to whom it can intrust the helm
of the state; and wherever they are, there is all the defence of the republic, or
rather, there is the republic itself; which as yet has only avenged, but has not re-es-
tablished itself. Truly and surely has the republic most high-born youths ready to
defend it, though they may for a time keep in the background from a desire for
tranquillity, still they can be recalled by the republic at any time.

15

It has been explained before that Fulvia had been the widow
of Clodius and of Curio, before she married Antonius.

The name of peace is sweet, the thing itself is most salutary. But between

peace and slavery there is a wide difference. Peace is liberty in tranquillity; slav-
ery is the worst of all evils- to be repelled, if need be, not only by war, but even
by death. But if those deliverers of ours have taken themselves away out of our
sight, still they have left behind the example of their conduct. They have done
what no one else had done. Brutus pursued Tarquinius with war; who was a king
when it was lawful for a king to exist in Rome. Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius,
and Marcus Manlius were all slain because they were suspected of aiming at regal
power. These are the first men who have ever ventured to attack, sword in hand, a
man who was not aiming at regal power, but actually reigning. And their action is
not only of itself a glorious and godlike exploit, but it is also one put forth for our
imitation; especially since by it they have acquired such glory as appears hardly
to be bounded by heaven itself. For although in the very consciousness of a glori-
ous action there is a certain reward, still I do not consider immortality of glory a
thing to be despised by one who is himself mortal.

Recollect, then, O Marcus Antonius, that day on which you abolished the dic-

tatorship. Set before you the joy of the Senate and people of Rome; compare it
with this infamous market held by you and by your friends; and then you will un-
derstand how great is the difference between praise and profit. But in truth, just as
some people, through some disease which has blunted the senses, have no concep-
tion of the niceness of food, so men who are lustful, avaricious, and criminal,
have no taste for true glory. But if praise cannot allure you to act rightly, still can-

not even fear turn you away from the most shameful actions? You are not afraid
of the courts of justice. If it is because you are innocent, I praise you; if because
you trust in your power of overbearing them by violence, are you ignorant of
what that man has to fear, who on such an account as that does not fear the courts
of justice?

But if you are not afraid of brave men and illustrious citizens, because they

are prevented from attacking you by your armed retinue, still, believe me, your
own fellows will not long endure you. And what a life is it, day and night to be
fearing danger from one’s own people! Unless, indeed, you have men who are
bound to you by greater kindnesses than some of those men by whom he was
slain were bound to Caesar; or unless there are points in which you can be com-
pared with him.

In that man were combined genius, method, memory, literature, prudence, de-

liberation, and industry. He had performed exploits in war which, though calami-
tous for the republic, were nevertheless mighty deeds. Having for many years
aimed at being a king, he had with great labor, and much personal danger, accom-
plished what he intended. He had conciliated the ignorant multitude by presents,
by monuments, by largesses of food, and by banquets; he had bound his own
party to him by rewards, his adversaries by the appearances of clemency. Why
need I say much on such a subject? He had already brought a free city, partly by
fear, partly by patience, into a habit of slavery.

With him I can, indeed, compare you as to your desire to reign; but in all

other respects you are in no degree to be compared to him. But from the many
evils which by him have been burned into the republic, there is still this good, that
the Roman people has now learned how much to believe everyone, to whom to
trust itself, and against whom to guard. Do you never think on these things? And
do you not understand that it is enough for brave men to have learned how noble
a thing it is as to the act, how grateful it is as to the benefit done, how glorious as
to the fame acquired, to slay a tyrant? When men could not bear him, do you
think they will bear you? Believe me, the time will come when men will race with
one another to do this deed, and when no one will wait for the tardy arrival of an
opportunity.

Consider, I beg you, Marcus Antonius, do some time or other consider the re-

public: think of the family of which you are born, not of the men with whom you
are living. Be reconciled to the republic. However, do you decide on your con-
duct. As to mine, I myself will declare what that shall be. I defended the republic
as a young man, I will not abandon it now that I am old. I scorned the sword of
Catiline, I will not quail before yours. No, I will rather cheerfully expose my own
person, if the liberty of the city can be restored by my death.

May the indignation of the Roman people at last bring forth what it has been

so long laboring with. In truth, if twenty years ago in this very temple I asserted
that death could not come prematurely upon a man of consular rank, with how
much more truth must I now say the same of an old man? To me, indeed, O con-

script fathers, death is now even desirable, after all the honors which I have
gained, and the deeds which I have done. I only pray for these two things: one,
that dying I may leave the Roman people free. No greater boon than this can be
granted me by the immortal gods. The other, that everyone may meet with a fate
suitable to his deserts and conduct toward the republic.

THE END OF THE SECOND ORATION AGAINST MARCUS
ANTONIUS